Actor, director and screenwriter Danny Huston tells Hollywood Authentic about wild swimming, his favourite tipple at 33,000ft and what he hears his dad telling him…
How important is a little bit of nonsense now and then to you? Nonsense keeps me alive, keeps things light-hearted. It is an artistry of sorts; it’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the bitter medicine of life a little more palatable.
What, if anything, makes you believe in magic? The unseen. When something happens that has a majesty that makes one be utterly spellbound by the magic of it all. Magic is the things that we don’t see, but we feel. Gravity is magical. A moment on screen is magical. Shadows and shapes can become magical. A twist of fate. The magical look in somebody’s eyes. Magic is everywhere. It is all around us. It is the sleight of the hand.
What was your last act of true cowardice? I don’t consider myself a coward. But a few weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve, I hesitated jumping into the Irish Sea. There were a couple of hundred mad Irishmen who went into it ahead of me, so I couldn’t back down. And it was absolutely glorious, completely rebooted me. So those cowardly moments are really there to test us, and to make us jump into the unknown – in this case, the rather cold but yet welcoming Celtic Sea.
Do you have any odd habits or rituals? I have a few rituals – one a Bloody Mary, spicy, extra lemon when I’m on a long flight. Usually when the plane has reached about 33,000ft of altitude. Nothing like it.
What is your party trick? Pulling a coin out of someone’s ear.
What is your mantra? Howl at the moon like a mangy old dog. Helps me keep connected to the cosmos. I have a few internal, repetitious voices that I suppose are mantras. One is inhabited by my father, and he just basically says, ‘You can do it, kid. You can do it.’
What is your favourite smell? That sharp, cool breeze that skims over the sea, gently lifting the salt. The intoxicating smell of jasmine on a summer’s night. Coffee. Cigars. A good red wine. The smell of the ocean mixed with suntan oil. A freshly cut lawn. To name a few….
What do you always carry with you? I’m ashamed to say. My phone.
What is your guilty pleasure? Dark bitter chocolate with nuts. Playing backgammon deep into the night with my nephew. That is a shared guilty pleasure.
Who is the silliest person you know? My nephew.
What would be your least favourite way to die? A long, endless fart performed in front of all of my family. That would be a rather embarrassing last gasp of sorts. And of course, some terrible execution. The guillotine would be a tense expectation to have.
What’s your idea of heaven? My idea of heaven would be having no fear, no regrets, no anxiety. Lifted somewhere in a stage of blissful joy. Celebrating a world without war, poverty or illness. A blissful, happy, somewhat light state of suspension. Floating ever so gently through space and time.
Danny Huston made his acting debut at the age of 12 in The ‘Human’ Factor and later went onto star in projects as varied as Birth, 21 Grams, The Aviator, The Constant Gardener, Wonder Woman and Stan & Oli. On TV he’s appeared in Masters Of Sex, American Horror Story, Succession and Yellowstone. His father, John Huston, produced his feature-length directorial debut Mr North, with Danny going on to direct The Maddening and The Last Photograph. On stage, he appeared in The Kid Stays in the Picture on the West End. He recently appeared in the rebooted The Naked Gun.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
*Arguably one of the most memorable (and quotable) scenes in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is when Mr Salt mumbles, ‘It’s a lot of nonsense,’ to which Wonka replies, in a sing-song voice, ‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Greg Williams joins the team creating an LA story on set in the heart of Beverly Hills as writer-director Bart Layton explains how his heist movie, Crime 101, takes its inspiration from classic Hollywood and the harsh realities of La-La.
When Greg Williams meets the cast and crew of Crime 101 at the iconic Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills to capture the shooting of a new thriller for Amazon Studios, the building reverberates with classic Hollywood memories onscreen as well as off. ‘I think we were down the road with the Beverly Wilshire when someone mentioned that that was the Pretty Woman location,’ admits Brit writer-director Bart Layton. ‘I was also watching Beverly Hills Cop, and they use it there as well.’
I think a lot of what I wanted to do was have a big movie experience where it does feel like it can be a really enjoyable, fun night out. But also the characters and the storyline all exist within this world that we all inhabit. You want a real ripping yarn but once the super-structure is put in place, it gives you this ability to talk about other things
Though his choice of location was unintentional, his aim to create something of a throwback movie with the original story of an LA criminal (Chris Hemsworth) robbing jewel couriers at points along the city’s arterial highway, the 101, was not. As Hemsworth’s robber works the gems, a cop (Mark Ruffalo) trails him, a HNW insurance broker (Halle Berry) crosses paths with him, a mercurial competitor (Barry Keoghan) challenges him, and a young woman (Monica Barbaro) crashes – literally – into him. ‘It felt like there weren’t many of those kinds of movies being offered up in theatres with a big, fancy cast,’ Layton says of his inspiration for the intersecting stories, name checking Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie as a cinematic touchstone. ‘I think a lot of what I wanted to do was have a big movie experience where it does feel like it can be a really enjoyable, fun night out. But also the characters and the storyline all exist within this world that we all inhabit. You want a real ripping yarn but once the super-structure is put in place, it gives you this ability to talk about other things.’
The framework of a heist movie allows Layton to explore themes of wealth disparity, inequality, sexism, homelessness and status anxiety. ‘It’s certainly not something that’s limited to LA, but there is something very unique about that town where what you have, and what you drive, and how you look, and youth and beauty and money, is really the currency. There’s also a recurring theme of: what are you doing for yourself? Versus what are you doing for the opinion of other people? LA is a place where you can end up getting a little off-track if you’re not careful by focusing on spending your life doing things for the benefit of how other people will see you, and that will give you some sense of self-worth and some value.’
Thrumming throughout the film – like a blood vessel – is the eponymous 101; used as a get-away, seen from high rise offices, heard from low-income housing and seen as a red-and-white artery of head and tail lights. ‘Aside from the Beverly Wilshire, I wanted to film in places that weren’t frequently seen, to get the full spectrum, a bit of the underbelly. There is a topographical separation in LA. If you are the wealthiest of the wealthy, you physically live further above sea level, so we wanted to represent that a little bit. Each of the characters inhabited their own landscape of different materials and textures.’
While looking for locations, Layton confesses he used some of his experiences in the final script to add authenticity. ‘A lot of what was written into the character that Tate Donovan plays [of a multi-millionaire] was actually inspired by when we were scouting all of these mansions. We would find these guys nutting about in these mansions in amazing locations above the city, with these extraordinary art collections that were a complete hodgepodge. They were just valuable. So I wrote that in.’
There were places where I was probably referencing William Friedkin – To Live and Die in LA and The French Connection. Billy Friedkin saw American Animals, and then I got summoned to his house, which I was obviously never going to not do, because he is a big inspiration and a hero
He placed Ruffalo’s cop in the Valley, created high-end jewellers in Calabasas after scouting trips, and based a harrowing jewellery robbery on research trips to real-life family-owned businesses Downtown and chats with gem couriers. His research helped create a tapestry of the have and have-not stratas in the City of Angels. ‘In the 45 minutes that a 9- or 10-carat diamond takes to go from Downtown to Calabasas or Santa Barbara, it may increase in its sellable value by 500% or 600%. Because I come from a documentary background, I’m constantly looking at: how can I get whatever there is, whatever the texture of the real world is – how can we borrow that, or steal it, or leave the door open for it? Believe it or not, there are people who do the job that Chris does in the film. And there are a few of them in prison!’
Also key to creating a convincing world was casting the right actor to play an inscrutable, methodical robber who’s driven by his childhood experiences. He sent the script to Hemsworth and the two got together to chat. ‘I said, “It’s not going to be a flawless hero…” And the more I said about this character being real the more he was excited by that. So we were both on the same page. So then for me the challenge was: can I find a way not to lose any of his incredible star power and magnetism, but to still find a way for him to be real.’
The writer-director wrote a role for his American Animals star, Barry Keoghan, creating a trigger-happy antithesis to Hemsworth’s clinical pragmatist, and met with Halle Berry for the role of Sharon, an insurance broker who can’t break the glass ceiling at work. ‘She said, “I don’t just know Sharon. I am her,”’ Layton recalls, writing around her during shooting, adding aspects that played into her own experience.
Though the filmmaker says that writing and directing his first full fiction film was ‘out of his comfort zone’ and ‘a big leap’, he felt confident he could essay heart-in-mouth chase sequences skidding through LA neighbourhoods after a masterclass from a pro. ‘There were places where I was probably referencing William Friedkin – To Live and Die in LA and The French Connection. Billy Friedkin saw American Animals, and then I got summoned to his house, which I was obviously never going to not do, because he is a big inspiration and a hero. We talked about how he did those [chase scenes]. So this was just taking that and having a bigger train set than I’d ever had to play with before.’
Again, the conversation returns to the pleasure of creating an original story in an industry often dominated by established IP – even if Layton has pitted Thor against The Hulk in putting Hemsworth and Ruffalo on-screen together as adversaries. He laughs. ‘It’s good for everyone to have more choice. I feel like we should all have more of that in the cinema…’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER Crime 101 is in cinemas now
Writer-director Edgar Wright delves into the operatic teenage tragedy and universal cruelty that powers Brian De Palma’s masterful Stephen King adap.
CARRIE (1976) Brian De Palma’s Carrie is my favourite Stephen King film adaptation. It is, of course, also the first published Stephen King novel and the first screen adaptation of his work. But that doesn’t mean that subsequent adaptations weren’t just as brilliant. There are many films of King’s work that I truly adore – two of my favourites were both directed by the recently, and very sadly, departed Rob Reiner. And yet Carrie remains intensely powerful, not just in the canon of King adaptations, but in how it touches something elemental. It’s a film that feels both very personal to me and, ironically, to almost everyone.
I’ve sometimes described Carrie in a slightly flippant way as ‘the Grease of horror movies’. Both films are about the high-school experience. Both establish cliques: the cool kids, the bullies, the outsiders. Both deal with the anxieties of teenage sexuality, humiliation, desire and the desperate need to belong. Such experiences translate across cultures. Even growing up outside the USA and not having had the ‘high school’ experience, I could still understand exactly what Grease and Carrie were showing me about adolescence and social cruelty. It’s sadly universal and hauntingly relatable.
But there’s another part of that analogy that gets closer to why Carrie means so much to me. The film is not a musical, but it is symphonic in its emotional scale. De Palma, at his very best here, takes raw, painful emotions and elevates them into something heightened, something almost mythic. If Grease is pop operetta, then Carrie is the film equivalent of a teenage tragedy ballad, or ‘death disc’. (The fact that it’s also scored by Italian composer Pino Donnagio, who, before his melancholic film scores, had international hits with melodramatic pop, is the blood-red icing on the cake.)
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
A better comparison to Carrie might actually be Robert Wise’s West Side Story. Both films centre on teenage tragedy. Both explore nascent, but forbidden, love weighed down by forces far larger than the people involved: the social systems, the peer pressure, the inherited cruelty. They mix romance and violence, sexuality and fear, innocence and brutality. They capture that volatile hormonal intensity of adolescence, where emotions feel life-or-death. They capture something that’s both deeply empathetic and deeply frightening.
Carrie tells the story of a bullied outcast. Sissy Spacek plays the titular Carrie White, a shy, socially isolated teenager raised by a fiercely religious mother whose warped beliefs have left her utterly unprepared for the world. This upbringing manifests brutally in the film’s opening, when Carrie is humiliated in the school shower by her classmates as she experiences her first period. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her body. Blood runs down her legs, and instead of help, she’s met with cruelty, thrown tampons and echoing laughter.
That moment of humiliation, combined with her lack of understanding that she is simply becoming a woman, is the catalyst that sets everything in motion. It’s a harrowing opening sequence because it feels so horribly plausible. It feels real.
Unbeknownst to Carrie, this trauma also unlocks something else. Since childhood, she has possessed latent telekinetic powers; the ability to move objects with her mind. This ‘gift’ is not presented as a fantasy, but as an extension of her emotional state.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
The bullying escalates. The girls responsible are punished with detention, but one of them, Chris Hargensen (played with delicious nastiness by Nancy Allen), receives a harsher penalty: she’s banned from attending the prom. That punishment breeds resentment that curdles into something far worse. What follows is one of the cruelest setups in film history, the plan to humiliate Carrie on, for a teenager, the grandest possible stage: the high-school prom. (Even as a Brit, one can understand the enormity of this occasion).
Carrie is paired with Tommy Ross, the archetypal golden-haired high-school prince, and manoeuvred into becoming prom queen. Suspended above the dance floor is a bucket of pig’s blood, waiting to fall. The blood is a deliberate echo of the shower scene, the narrative closing in on itself as humiliation becomes spectacle.
And here is where Carrie does something extraordinary. For a fleeting moment, hope briefly flickers.
Tommy, initially pressured into taking Carrie by his girlfriend Sue, who is unaware of the true brutality of the prank, begins to genuinely connect with her. Against her mother’s furious objections, Carrie attends the prom and gives herself a makeover, blossoming into the beautiful young woman the world has never seen.
When Carrie and Tommy slow-dance together, De Palma’s camera circles them in a hypnotic 360. And something strange happens for me every time I watch it. Much like the midpoint of Titanic, I get the whimsical notion that maybe this time things will turn out differently. Maybe the iceberg won’t be hit. Maybe the cruelty will stop here.
In theory, you could change the film here, leave the cinema, or stop the tape, and invent your own ending, one where Carrie gets to have this happiness. Because what follows is devastating.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
When Carrie and Tommy are announced as Prom King and Queen, Donaggio’s magnificently sinister ‘Bucket of Blood’ cue begins, and there’s an inexorable feeling of dread. The euphoria of Carrie and Tommy’s dance is replaced by the sickening knowledge that public degradation is inevitable. De Palma’s camera cranes with Carrie and Tommy as they take the stage, then travels upward along the rope to the bucket of pig’s blood hanging precariously above them. As an audience member, you’re caught in an intoxicating mix of emotions. On one hand, you desperately don’t want the blood to fall. Carrie doesn’t deserve any of this. She’s been tortured enough throughout the film, and the idea of taking away this perfect moment feels almost unbearable. And yet, the horror-movie fan in you, and the part of you that has fully sympathised with Carrie as a bullied teenager, also wants to see her unleash apocalyptic revenge. And boy, does she.
When Carrie wreaks revenge, she does so spectacularly. De Palma uses every cinematic trick at his disposal: harsh red lighting, split-screen, slow motion, fractured lenses, and the disorienting sea of voices inside Carrie’s head confirming what her mother warned her all along: ‘They’re all going to laugh at you.’
There are several moments in this sequence that give me goosebumps. Sometimes an image from a favourite film is burned into your brain, even if it only appears on screen for a second.
United Artists/Amazon MGM Studios
One of those is the horrifically beautiful shot of the prom backdrop bursting into flames behind Carrie White. I’d seen that image in an old copy of Starburst magazine a good 10 years before I was old enough to see Carrie, and even after poring over those pages for hours, seeing it in motion was breathtaking.
Another devastating element of this climax is that Carrie’s vengeance is so all-consuming that it doesn’t just claim the guilty. Perfectly innocent people, including those who tried to help her, are swept up in the maelstrom of her telekinetic vengeance and die horribly. Everyone in the high-school gym dies except Sue Snell. And even she isn’t truly spared. She’s left with the haunting final shock of Carrie’s hand bursting from the grave, a moment ripped off so many times that its power is taken for granted.
Sue survives, but the memory of Carrie will ruin her forever.
I love that it isn’t clean or black-and-white in its morality, or in its treatment of revenge. And it makes you complicit too, a horror film where you actively want to see the violence unleashed.
In most horror films, your sympathy lies with characters you don’t want to see die. In Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis, the quintessential final girl, is such a warm presence that you’re invested in Michael Myers not killing her. In Carrie, the audience is primed in a very different way. After watching this girl endure relentless cruelty, you don’t just want to see her destruction of the prom, you crave it.
All of these elements make De Palma’s film feel like even more than the sum of its exceptional parts. It’s pure cinematic opera in every sense of the word: visually, musically and emotionally.
A modern classic that has come to define 21st-century LA, this musical monument to one of Hollywood’s most ambitious producers is an audio and visual masterwork; a striking feat of design embraced by the music community and the movies.
Hollywood Authentic reflects on the genius that inspired the Walt Disney Concert Hall – ‘the light of the Hollywood dream’.
How long does it take for a building to become a landmark? The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Bunker Hill makes the case that it can happen instantaneously, even if the journey to the opening wasn’t always smooth. Standing as a monument to two giants in their respective fields – pioneering filmmaker Walt Disney and exuberantly ambitious architect Frank Gehry – the venue, which is home to the LA Philharmonic, was conceived as ‘a living room for the city’. That contradiction between welcoming accessibility and imposing achievement defines Disney and Gehry. Both made magic that sprung from pencil sketches.
To see Gehry’s squiggly starting point for the Concert Hall, it’s almost impossible to fathom what it turned into. There’s a deconstructivist spirit to the gleaming surfaces that make up the striking exterior of the building, which remains open to interpretation. Do you see a futuristic spaceship with sails, or loose, billowing music sheets, or something else entirely? It’s an invitation to imagination, the building’s clean visual sweep belying the technical rigour required to bring it to life when it first opened in 2003. Even if you’ve never been – and a reported four million visitors flocked there within the first three years of opening – you’ve certainly seen its sleek lines in one of its many TV and film appearances. But it wasn’t all plain sailing…
The project began in earnest in 1987, with a $50m donation from Walt’s widow, Lillian Disney, which she bestowed on the Los Angeles Music Center (Lillian would die 10 years later, before the hall was completed). It was a tribute to Walt’s passion for the arts, and music in particular – classical music was central to so many of his animated works, not least the Silly Symphony shorts and his 1940 opus Fantasia, which synchronised classical pieces with shorts of varied animation styles. As Walt’s work made entertainment accessible for all, so would the Concert Hall.
Finding the architect was the first step, and Gehry was eventually chosen as the longlist was whittled down to one (other contenders had included architecture giants Hans Hollein, Gottfried Böhm and James Stirling). Canadian-American Gehry was one of the biggest names in the business at the time, and worked on the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao over a similar time period (though the Spanish building would be completed first, and its shiny metallic finish would eventually inspire the Concert Hall).
After landing the appointment, Gehry visited the Berliner Philharmonie concert hall, staying in the city for a week and attending every concert. The feeling of intimacy that architect Hans Scharoun had achieved was inspiring to Gehry, who described the German as ‘a master of people-feeling architecture’. The Walt Disney Concert Hall took the best part of two decades to come together, and there was a period of a couple of years from 1994 where construction stalled entirely, thanks to a runaway budget and reported internal feuding, before it got back on track in 1996, with help from numerous benefactors; many are named on the sweeping tiled wall inside, and the curved staircase is named in honour of film composer Henry Mancini.
Gehry had originally planned to have the Concert Hall finished in stone, which he believed would glow at night. But budgetary concerns twinned with the success of Bilbao made the now iconic metal finish inevitable. Gehry leaned on Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA (Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application) to translate the design into practical plans for contractors. Such VFX tech was necessary to bring his idea into reality; every stainless steel panel used is a unique shape. To avoid the need for rivets, 3M’s VHB Tape – a kind of super, double-sided tape also used on aircraft – held the panels in place.
When it opened in 2003 – at a total cost of $274m – it became an instant classic (despite some protests over the spending given the city’s poor and homeless population). A review in the New York Times called the Concert Hall ‘a French curve in a city of T squares’, evocatively describing it as ‘the light of the Hollywood dream’. Yes, some of the panels needed to be sanded down as they were creating too much glare for drivers and overheating some nearby apartments, but it’s no surprise that film stars and movie fans have flocked to the location.
Among its notable screen appearances, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is also the setting for a swanky event ahead of the climax of 2008’s Iron Man. Where else for genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Tony Stark? In the same year, it was also featured in a pivotal sequence in spy comedy Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, who are at the venue to stop a bomb threat against the president (James Caan), who’s attending a concert. ‘It’s the crown jewel of LA,’ Get Smart’s location manager Kokayi Ampah said of using it in the film. ‘It says you’re in LA.’
The project began in earnest in 1987, with a $50m donation from Walt’s widow Lillian Disney, which she bestowed on the Los Angeles Music Center
The Concert Hall also provided near-future vibes for Spike Jonze’s prescient AI-companion romance Her, as Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) and Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) people-watch, and Marion Cotillard’s tortured soprano had a residency there in outlandish musical Annette. It received the ultimate decree of pop-culture status with a parody on The Simpsons (featuring a cameo from Gehry himself).
But perhaps its most apt onscreen use was in Joe Wright’s The Soloist, which told the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a gifted cellist who develops schizophrenia and becomes homeless, before finding a path back via journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.). Because, for all the cinematic showiness of the building’s exterior, it is first and foremost a music venue, and while those sweeping curves continue inside, the wooden surfaces – which glow almost gold – add to a cosy, inviting space.
The acoustics were baked into the design of the building as a priority. Gehry broke away from the conventional ‘shoebox’ layout for a concert hall, to have the seating in the round. While this seating makes it slightly more awkward for visitors to file into, Gehry said that ‘the payoff is incredible’, that the musicians felt more connected to the audience, and vice versa. Testing the sound on a scale model and working with acousticians Yasuhisa Toyota and his predecessor Minoru Nagata, to ensure that there was not a bad seat in the house when it came to sound. With the sound reflection offered by the Douglas fir panelling, there’s no need for audio amplification for any of the 2,265 seats.
A focal point of the hall is the 6,134-pipe organ that Gehry designed in conjunction with organ designer and builder Manuel J. Rosales. The pipes are referred to as French fries for the way they poke out irregularly, in a riposte to the anticipated formality of such an instrument. It’s another fun personal touch in a venue where everything feels generously considered, from the lobby’s ‘trees’ (wood-clad metal beams) to the lily fountain that can be found in the Blue Ribbon Garden. The latter was a tribute to Lillian Disney from Gehry, who instructed Tomas Osinki to build the smooth, wavy structure from thousands of mosaic fragments created from specially acquired Royal Delft Blue porcelain. Gehry had said at the time of completion that he saw the Concert Hall as a ‘kind of flower’ to Lillian, and that expression finds fitting form in this graceful marvel.
Gehry died in December 2025, leaving behind an incredible legacy. Like Walt Disney, Gehry was an innovator who brought art and imagination to the masses. It’s fitting that his most iconic work pays tribute to a fellow trailblazer, and like Walt’s work it will continue to entertain and inspire.
Photographs by MARIO DE LOPEZ Words by MATT MAYTUM The Walt Disney Music Hall 111 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 www.laphil.com
Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images seen small on his social media. This issue: The Best Actor winners at the 96th Academy Awards ceremony.
I was shooting stage-side at the Academy Awards and Cillian Murphy had just won Best Actor for Oppenheimer – and he’d been awarded by former winners of the category Nic Cage, Matthew McConaughey, Sir Ben Kingsley, Brendan Fraser and Forest Whitaker. They had come off stage together and, soon after, the show moved onto the Best Director category, which Christopher Nolan was nominated in. Cillian had first come over to see who was winning Best Director, and then all the other actors lined up alongside him to observe the announcement from the wings. It wasn’t set up in any way, this was just how they landed. It’s one of those very rare circumstances where everything is just given to you – you’ve just got to put yourself in the right place. There was nothing set up about it; it’s absolutely an observed picture and I’m in no way participating in it. I love it because they’re almost standing like Academy Awards in this very straight up position, their hands clasped in front of them, unconsciously uniform. It was one of the big pics I got of the night and I think really speaks to the reverence that is reserved for winning an Oscar.
Mona Fastvold’s biopic of the leader of the Shaker religious movement is as unconventional and deliberate a piece of cinema as her last project, the lauded, bum-numbing The Brutalist, which she also co-wrote with her partner Brady Corbet. Incorporating interpretive dance and sung hymns into her story of an 18th century Manchester lass touched by God and inspiring a movement, Fastvold asks audiences to feel the fervour and radical departure presented by Lee, rather than suck up a history lesson in Shakerism. For some viewers, that may feel as though Lee is untethered, lacking in context, as she negotiates growing from a persecuted girl to a leader in the New World. For others it’s a welcome change to the usual cradle-to-grave recounting of historical figures – an invigorating glimpse into an untold life.
Searchlight Pictures
When we first meet Ann (Amanda Seyfried) in the North of England, she is poor and insignificant until she becomes famous for believing herself to be the second messiah – a bold statement in a Christian patriarchal society. Married to Abraham (Christopher Abbott), worshipped by her brother William (Lewis Pullman) and believing that the divine is channelled through devotees via involuntary, ecstatic spasms during prayer, Ann is soon leading a local sect and gathering a community together who abide by the rules of celibacy and physical veneration. In candlelit drawing rooms the cast sway, vibrate and whip their bodies around while singing and stomping, the rhythm and cinematography as seductive as the lure of a new way of approaching Christianity for Lee’s followers.
Searchlight PicturesSearchlight Pictures
Imprisoned (and singing from her cell) Ann needs to find a place where her new ideas have the freedom to blossom, where a woman can preach, where new beliefs and immigrants are welcomed. It’s perhaps ironic in today’s political landscape to watch the Shakers set sail to the promised land of upstate New York, where the community grows (and makes excellent furniture). But by the time that Ann is getting grey-haired, after grief has diminished her, it’s hard to determine the takeaway for audiences in this deliberately woozy, slippery and insular portrait. Though the cultural and sociological imprint of Lee may be untapped, audiences will be certain of one thing: that Seyfried should have been in the awards conversation this year for her full-bodied, robust performance.
Searchlight Pictures
Words by JANE CROWTHER Pictures courtesy of Searchlight Pictures The Testament of Ann Leepremiered at the 82nd Venice Film Festival and is in cinemas now
Words & Interview by ARIANNE PHILLIPS As told to JANE CROWTHER
The Kiwi designer who regularly collaborates with Guillermo del Toro – including awards-season contender Frankenstein – tells Arianne Phillips about growing up surrounded by stories, the alchemy of opportunity, turning fear into motivation and her photocopying addiction.
Frankenstein (2025). Netflix
Kate Hawley is a New Zealander, who grew up in the world of opera and theatre. She attended the Motley School of Theatre Design in London, under the direction of Margaret Harris and Alison Chitty. This provided a foundation and a love for design in all disciplines of her work, including theatre, ballet, opera and film. She began her professional career as a costume designer and set designer in theatre and opera, with her extensive theatre credits including set and costume design for the New Zealand International Arts Festival, the New Zealand Opera Auckland Theatre Company, the Salisbury Playhouse, Wexford Opera Festival, and the National Theatre Studio – to name just a few of her many accomplishments in the sphere.
2003 brought the release of Kate’s feature film debut with The Ride, which would be followed on by On a Clear Day with the same director, Gaby Dellal. In 2013, Kate’s third film would be her first collaboration with director Guillermo del Toro for Pacific Rim, followed by Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow. In 2015, she reunited with director del Toro for Crimson Peak. Notable films that have followed are David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, Christian Rivers’ Mortal Engines, Chris Sanders’ The Call of the Wild, and her second film with Doug Liman, Chaos Walking.
In 2022, Kate made her foray into television, designing the series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, while 2025 saw her third collaboration with del Toro, Frankenstein. Kate’s designs have been presented at numerous exhibitions, including an upcoming exhibit, The Art of Frankenstein at Selfridges at London; At Home with Monsters at LACMA, Los Angeles, and AGO in Toronto; the theatre design exhibition at the National Theatre in London; the František Zelenka Exhibition at Central St. Martins in London; and the International Scenofest exhibition in Prague and at The Barbican in London.
AP: It’s nice to learn about all of your accomplishments…
KH: What I see when I look back is moments of opportunity, that people saw what I was into, and saw the passion that I had for working. Like, during school, I would go and work in the theatre and the opera. I had two teachers that actually understood and supported it. You think of an Olympic talent, and they’re always supported in their youth. Most of us in our world of the arts don’t develop those skills until later. But having those two teachers who actually saw that I wanted to be in this world, and actually turned a blind eye to my appalling grades – it made a difference.
AP: Where did you grow up?
KH: I was born and bred in New Zealand but when I was still a baby my parents moved to the UK, because my father was singing with the opera there. My mother was working in the wardrobe there, as well as being a nurse. I remember this feeling of being in the world of a storybook, and seeing the productions. I would sit through the opera at [age] 5.
I remember crying when my father was in Eugene Onegin, and he shot someone. But it was larger than life, you know? Tremendous highs, some lows. They’d have parties after the opening night of the opera, and all these women would drift in, in fur coats and this heady perfume… It’s a sensory thing, a lot of it. All of this had an amazing impact on me. We learned to visualise stories by listening to the music. And every night, my mother would read us a story; every birthday, gifting us a story. Imagination and being in those worlds – it was both parents who gifted me that. All of my siblings are creative.
Frankenstein (2025). Netflix
AP: What inspired you to start designing costumes and sets? And drawing your designs?
KH: I can remember the moment. I was painting backdrops on sets, just because I wanted to. You know, it was a great thing to do. I loved being there, in that world. There was one woman who was in charge of the props, and she said to me, ‘You know you can do this as a real job?’ There was that one moment that I went, ‘I never thought that I could do this.’ Back home in New Zealand, there’s so much creativity but there’s also this fear that you must go and study, or have an education behind you to fall back on, because the arts aren’t financially supported. When I went to Motley, the theatre design school, I learned a really amazing process. We had to look at it from a director’s point of view; from an actor’s point of view. A huge part of our job is communication. And drawing was my way in with characters. Sometimes it’s drawing gestures or moments, and not being locked into a finished costume illustration. There’s pressure when you work on big movies to have these highly polished illustrations. But actually the best of the work that I do is when they’re just little gestures or moments, and you can get a sense of volume of a character, or the sense of a silhouette. I think when you’re not locked in by a very highly polished piece of concept art, there’s room to play and live and discover things within it.
AP: How did you make the transition from theatre into film?
KH: I worked on a short film with David Morrissey and I had my first interview with Gaby Dellal for On a Clear Day, which was the film we did with Brenda Blethyn and Peter Mullan. She did give me a chance and was extraordinary in her use of colour and graphic sensibilities. Another opportunity happened when I was living in Suffolk. I got to meet and know Bernard Hill, the wonderful actor who was in The Lord of the Rings. Somehow my work ended up in conversation on a photocopier in New Zealand, where Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh saw it. And then I got my opportunity to return home to meet with them. While working with Peter I met Guillermo. Guillermo just looked at my books, and went, ‘We have a common language.’ So it’s all been a series of little accidents. You don’t always choose things. Things happen for you sometimes, you know? An alchemy.
Crimson Peak (2015). Alamy
AP: When working on a film does your experience as a set designer change your conversations with the production designers?
KH: There’s a lot about the language that they’re using, and, in the case of Frankenstein, there’s a lot of imagery that Guillermo and Tamara [Deverell, production designer] used of circles and windows, which also echoed the themes of mythology and religion. So you have the architecture, the bones, the skeleton of the visual language. And then there’s the layering that goes within. Colour works between both of us. Very much the way that Tamara, Guillermo and I work – he’s a conductor. Tamara’s hugely collaborative and sharing. Every note she gets, she shares with me, and I do the same with my crew, or with her. It’s not a competition. Because we all know the language that Guillermo is developing, we know how to respond, or what to offer.
AP: How do you make your choices?
KH: I haven’t always had choices. Sometimes I’ve had to do the realistic thing of: I need to work. There was a time when it was always based on the script. But I’ve learned more and more that it’s actually the chemistry of the director, and understanding their language. When I work with Guillermo, I know we’re going on a journey. With Doug Liman, there’s chaos and a different kind of fun journey to be had. So I think for me, at the end, it’s going to be your director who’s going to shape whatever’s in the script and the vision beyond that. It can be surprising. Sometimes it moves drastically away from where that starts, and sometimes it doesn’t change. I think at the end of the day, if I had my choices, it would be based on all those things coming together – the director and script. But the director is the biggest thing. It’s the most important relationship.
Pacific Rim (2013). Warner Bros. Pictures/Alamy
AP: What is your favourite part of being a costume designer?
KH: My first favourite part is where there’s no talk of money or budget, and you’re in the dreaming. You get the script for the first day, and everything’s possible. You don’t always get that in the end result, but the potential for it all to be possible is magic. And the second moment is when you find one hook that starts describing the language of what you want. There’s one thing that’s catching that idea. It comes back to communication, and allowing the process, too. It’s a very intimate thing, sharing ideas, in a way. And no one’s going to get it right the first time. So you have to trust that. I’ve only now become brave in myself about offering something, and going, ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect, if it’s not the final idea.’ Because I’d hold onto things. I’d rip up bits of paper and drawings and illustrations going, ‘It’s not good enough.’ And then you realise: it’s a component of parts. It’s trusting in the process, and going, ‘Here’s one idea, and here’s an idea with this added.’ It’s a process of communication.
AP: What would you say would be your strength as a designer?
KH: I always have another idea. So if something gets turned down, I have lots of ideas. Sometimes that’s a bit of a pain in the ass for everyone else, and sometimes it can be overthought. Sometimes if people just want a police uniform, I’m the person that goes, ‘But does it have to be just a police uniform?’ But 90 per cent of what we do is: ‘That’s not working. What else have you got?’ And you’ve got two seconds to do it, right?
Suicide Squad, 2016. Warner Bros. Pictures/Alamy
AP: What do you think the biggest challenges are?
KH: The way my head works – I sometimes fixate on something, and it becomes really important to the point of driving everyone up the wall. I’ve got a photocopying problem! I have to plant trees at the end of every project. And learning to let go and say, ‘It’s not perfect. Time’s moving on. There’s a deadline.’ Sometimes I find that difficult because I want everything to fit in a certain way, and I have to let go, and think of the bigger sides of the project, and the good of the project, and for my workroom.
AP: I agree. We have quicker prep times now…
KH: It’s defined by output, isn’t it? Because we can jump so high; because we have teams with amazing skills, and you meet those amazing deadlines. And then people go, ‘Great. So now we’re giving you half the time to do it.’
AP: When you’re looking for inspiration, where’s the well that you draw from?
KH: Always books, you know? But actually I’ve chosen to live on this piece of land in New Zealand that’s far away from the rest of the world. It’s a world-building place. It’s just seeing shapes in nature. It’s why I always loved the works of Tolkien and the Norse myths. It’s why I love Frankenstein. Even if I’m doing something that’s more sci-fi or architecture – there’s still a landscape there. There’s still a language. I think it’s all around you. And then in the development of this, Guillermo was building his visual language, and I needed jewellery and Tiffany came on board. We went through the archives and Louis Comfort Tiffany’s use of organic forms in nature, the colours – they echoed Guillermo’s visual and painterly language. And then there was the appreciation of beauty in craftsmanship. Inspiration in the form of nature, breaking its boundaries.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022). Amazon Studios/Alamy
AP: What continues to motivate you?
KH: Fear is a great motivator. Not paralysing but it does make you seek and question, and to be brave and learn something new. Going back to Edge of Tomorrow – that was like putting a car together with all its parts. It’s not something that would have been on my wish list, but then when you understood that basically we were making a giant puppet and all the components – then it became a different thing. And then you get through to the end of it. I always compare it to childbirth. There’s the terrible moment of labour where you go ‘never again’… then six months later you forget the pain you went through.
AP: What would you say is your career highlight?
KH: I suppose there’s different achievements. When we did the exosuits on Edge of Tomorrow, I learned a hell of a lot from Tom Cruise about filmmaking. Frankenstein was a once-in-a-lifetime project and to see a finished cut, and go, ‘Oh, look at what the scenic artist did. Look at what the props team did…’ So every frame, I sit there and I go, ‘Well, there’s at least 100 of my department, and there’s 200 over in the ship-building department…’ So every time I look at that, I see all of those people that were involved. And Guillermo celebrates it. The film is a celebration in itself of craft. Crimson Peak was a chamber piece. It’s like when I saw your work on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Arianne – I really saw the scale and all the beautiful mythologies within the world of Hollywood being created.
Edge of Tomorrow, 2014. Warner Bros. Studios/Alamy
AP: What films were influential for you?
KH: Definitely Cocteau. Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes was an amazing influence. Pan’s Labyrinth obviously was another defining moment for me. The world of Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman was a huge influence on me – the way they used colour; the theatrical quality of it. Drowning by Numbers and The Draughtsman’s Contract. All of those films have a quality in world-building. And sometimes it changes as you grow. What Motley taught me is that you serve the text, and you serve your director. What I think is not championed enough, is that all of us costume designers are capable of many languages, different approaches. We are capable of moving from one discipline and genre to another. I find it frustrating that we can get typecast in to a genre – I love crossing disciplines but we all bring our own process, unique language and point of view to it.
AP: What do you tell students about pursuing costume design?
KH: What I have learned is that everybody has a different story about how they came to be costume designers. There doesn’t seem to be a rule. I’d say: find your like-minded people. Find those kids wanting to be directors. Get together, and make stories. Keep being brave and trying things. And learning from others. It might not be your end goal, but you’ll always learn from every opportunity and every situation. Always. And for young directors, it goes back to what we discussed earlier – trusting in the process, that it is a process in terms of trying to communicate and share your ideas, and being kind.
Photographs by Greg Williams Words by Jane Crowther
Robert Aramayo’s shock at winning the Best Actor category at BAFTA last night over an impressive category including Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B. Jordan, Ethan Hawke and Jesse Plemons was amplified by the collective audience gasps in the room as Kerry Washington read out his name – and clear when he came off stage grasping two BAFTA masks (having previously won the EE Rising Star Award). ‘This is MAD!’ he exclaimed to Greg Williams as he sank into a stage-side chair, his win the biggest upset of the night for bookies, and a moment that galvanises a meteoric rise this year for the Hull native. Just weeks earlier, Greg had shot Aramayo in a London greasy-spoon cafe for Cartier while the actor was juggling a theatre run in Guess How Much I Love You and the very idea of being nominated for a BAFTA. ‘It’s really genuinely unexpected,’ he told us.
After taking a moment to compose himself, Aramayo quickly found the man he’d portrayed in I Swear (releasing in the US on 24 April) backstage, campaigner John Davidson. The focus of controversy during the awards show due to his involuntary outbursts caused by Tourette Syndrome, Davidson was emotional for Aramayo, clutching him in a huge hug, the real-life Dotty from the film wiping away proud tears next to him and rocking a ‘Spunk for Milk’ necklace (one of the lines from the film)…
Teyana Taylor
The show had begun with puce carpet arrivals from 2pm – Teyana Taylor arriving in a regal custom Burberry trench coat, her train carried behind her, with Chase Infiniti and Erin Doherty both negotiating structured, space-taking Louis Vuitton silhouettes, Paul Mescal (in Prada with Cartier jewels) and Gracie Abrams enjoying a date night, and Sinners on-screen adversaries, Michael B. Jordan (in monochrome Prada) and Jack O’Connell, sharing a warm embrace. The rain held off for an unseasonably mild afternoon as guests crowded the Royal Festival Hall terrace to sip Taittinger Champagne in the sunshine.
Paul Mescal and Gracie Abrams
Having walked the carpet alone, Timothée Chalamet hung out in the green room backstage with Kylie Jenner and the evening’s first presenters, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, before heading to the auditorium as guests found their seats for a show presented by Alan Cumming, with the Prince and Princess of Wales in attendance. After Jordan and Lindo had kicked off the night awarding Best Special Effects to the Avatar: Fire and Ash team, they lingered at backstage monitors to watch the Best Supporting Actress category, whooping and applauding in delight when Sinners colleague Wunmi Mosaku (in an electric blue custom gown by Priya Ahluwalia) won. ‘Get it in, let’s do it!’ Jordan encouraged her as she thanked her teachers before he and Lindo ensured the pregnant actress negotiated the stairs off-stage safely.
Delroy Lindo and Michael B. JordanWunmi Mosaku and Alicia Vikander Paddington Bear
Supporting actor was won by Sean Penn for One Battle After Another, who was absent from the event, but presenter Maggie Gyllenhaal ensured she snapped a photo of his winning envelope as she left the stage, before the star to cause the biggest stir backstage arrived. ‘This is the highlight of my evening!’ gasped Erin Doherty when she was informed that Paddington Bear from the West End sellout musical would pass her in the wings. Performed physically by Arti Shah with James Hameed providing the voice and controlling the marmalade lover’s facial expressions, Paddington wowed the audience as he toddled on stage, hand in hand with a guide, to present Best Children’s and Family Film, won by Boong. He later got in the artists’ lift backstage, holding court while blinking and smiling under his felt hat.
The run of Frankenstein wins began with the film taking home Best Production Design for Tamara Deverell and Shane Viea, Best Hair And Make Up for Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey, Mike Hill and Megan Many and Best Costume Design for recent Hollywood Authentic profile, Kate Hawley before another act to prompt giddiness. The KPop Demon Hunters trio performed ‘Golden’ from the film; EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI harmonised backstage a cappella before blasting their song to a front-row Chase Infiniti (singing along to all the words) and Timothée Chalamet taking photos on his phone.
Kate Hawley and Hannah Waddingham
As Ethan Hawke strolled to the wings with a glass of red wine, Sinners grabbed another award for Ryan Coogler for Best Original Screenplay, as Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer went to Akinola Davies Jr for My Father’s Shadow starring recent Hollywood Authentic cover star Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù and I Swear won for Best Casting. One Battle After Another’s 6-gong haul continued with Best Cinematography for Michael Bauman (the film also bagged Best Editing for Andy Jurgensen as well as Director and Adapted Screenplay for Paul Thomas Anderson and Best Film).
Ethan HawkeWarwick Davis and Paul Thomas AndersonLiza Marshall and Chloé Zhao with the cast and crew of Hamnet
The In Memoriam segment was accompanied by Jessie Ware singing ‘The Way We Were’ and as she stood backstage doing vocal warm-up she was greeted and encouraged by presenter Stormzy and Hannah Waddingham, who performed the role last year. With Best Film Not In The English Language going to the Sentimental Value team (who came off stage exclaiming in delighted Norwegian), Best British Film went to Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. Seventeen of the cast and crew took to the stage to celebrate, with Jessie Buckley arriving at Greg Williams’ stage-side ‘studio of spontaneity’ (a pre-lit section of the wings to capture winners and presenters as they exited stage left) with her child costars wrapped around her. Chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment, Dame Donna Langley was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship awarded by the Prince of Wales. The first British woman to run a major studio, Langley said; ‘My hope is that those of us who help tell stories for a living continue to find inspiration to make popular art that carries over into people’s everyday lives and reminds us that decency is a superpower.’
Jessie BuckleyDame Donna LangleyKate Hudson
The evening rounded out with announcements for Best Actress – and frontrunner Jessie Buckley collecting gold for Hamnet – and Best Actor. Acknowledging her fellow nominees, Buckley (in custom Chanel) congratulated Emma Stone, Rose Byrne, Kate Hudson, Chase Infiniti and Renate Reinsve, saying; ‘You are all just radical and you are doing it for the naughty girls’. She dedicated the award to her baby daughter, promising ‘to continue to be disobedient so you can belong to a world in all your complete wildness as a young woman’.
Glenn Close and Jesse PlemonsLeonardo DiCaprio
As One Battle After Another was named Best Film by Glenn Close (with Paul Thomas Anderson wondering where the bar was as he cradled his award), the thrilled team decompressed backstage. ‘Why does nobody want to get near you?’ DiCaprio teased his on-screen daughter Infiniti about her huge skirt, and she leaned forward to straighten his bow tie.
Alicia Vikander and Patrick Dempsey
Dinner kicked off downstairs with truffle chicken and popcorn ice cream before revellers headed to afterparties; Warner Bros at Kettners, Disney at Soho House and Netflix at Twenty Two. There Patrick and Jillian Dempsey, with their daughter Talula, sipped cocktails while Joseph Quinn got the dance party started doing an impeccable Electric Slide to the DJ’s beats. In another part of the multi-level venue Machine Gun Kelly and Pete Davidson hung out, Regé-Jean Page chatted with Malachi Kirby, while Kerry Washington, Alicia Vikander, Noomi Rapace, Riz Ahmed, Tom Blyth, Aimee Lou Wood, Mark Strong and Mia McKenna-Bruce enjoyed the cocktails and full caviar bar.
WINNERS:
Best Film: One Battle After Another
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Leading Actor: Robert Aramayo, I Swear
Leading Actress: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
EE Rising Star Award: Robert Aramayo
Outstanding British Film: Hamnet
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer: Akinola Davies Jr., My Father’s Shadow
Film Not in the English Language: Sentimental Value
Documentary: Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Animated Film: Zootopia 2
Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Original Screenplay: Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Original Score: Ludwig Göransson, Sinners
Costume Design: Kate Hawley, Frankenstein
Production Design: Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau, Frankenstein
Special Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Daniel Barrett and Eric Saindon, Avatar: Fire and Ash
Makeup & Hair: Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey, Mike Hill and Megan Many, Frankenstein
Editing: Andy Jurgensen, One Battle After Another
Cinematography: Michael Bauman, One Battle After Another
Sound: Steve Speed, Nick Fry, James Evans, and Hugh Wan, F1
Casting: Lauren Evans, I Swear
British Short Animation: Two Black Boys in Paradise
British Short Film: This is Endometriosis
Photographs by Greg Williams Words by Jane Crowther
It was lovely to shoot David Jonsson for this hand-numbered limited special edition of Hollywood Authentic because kismet stuck during our time together. I rarely make a plan when I shoot a subject, and when David and I met in Mayfair we planned to hang out and chat. But, very unexpectedly, it turned out that the very bench he used to dream on as a kid was metres away from where we pulled over in Berkeley Square. That lovely, poetic discovery and full circle moment of achievement was echoed in his becoming a Cartier ambassador having seen, in his own family, the reverence for a Cartier ring that his mother bought his father.
Photograph by Lauren Carnell
David is last year’s BAFTA Rising Star recipient and he’s building a career with integrity and for longevity, qualities shared with Cartier craftsmanship. I got the same sense from shooting this year’s Rising Star nominees, Robert Aramayo and Posy Sterling, in a caff in Pimlico; two gifted actors who want to tell important, culturally relevant stories. And our A Little Nonsense subject is also a former Rising Star recipient – Mia McKenna Bruce has consolidated her promise since her 2024 win and is now filming one of the biggest cinematic projects on the slate, Sam Mendes’ four-film event Beatles biopic. Having been an official BAFTA photographer for 20 years and worked with Cartier for a decade, and been side-of-stage when both David and Mia won – I feel like I’ve had a front row seat to their success.
The Cartier pre-BAFTA dinner party at The Arlington in London was an opportunity to celebrate talent in an intimate venue and to have some fun in the kitchens. I’ve always enjoyed the dichotomy of glamour and the working, industrial environment of a kitchen – and it evokes memories of presidents arriving at venues or Scorsese’s steadicam shot following Henry Hill through the kitchens to the Copacobana in Goodfellas. I took an illustrious crowd including Tilda Swinton, Paul Mescal, Kate Hudson, Mark Strong, David Jonsson, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Robert Aramayo, Posy Sterling, Archie Medekwe and Spike Fearn to the prep kitchens below the dining room for some play amongst the pans and hobs.
Later, when guests left the event they were given a hand-numbered limited edition of our Cartier special collaboration magazine. It was the perfect end to the perfect night.
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Actor and producer David Jonsson reflects on his acting journey and the dreams made real in a career he’s building for the long run.
David Jonsson gazes out over Mayfair from the floor-to-ceiling windows of a top-floor suite at the Chancery Rosewood hotel, sipping his third cup of coffee. ‘I’ve moved all about different parts of London now,’ the British actor and producer says, ‘but East London is home.’ Last year’s recipient of BAFTA’s coveted Rising Star Award (which is where we first met) has been working all over different parts of the world as his career has taken off, but the UK’s capital is still where he lives, and the place that keeps him grounded. ‘My family are Creole. We have African and Caribbean influences that all feel very represented in East London and it’s one of those places that’s very community-based. Everyone knows your business. I guess the more work I’ve done, the more I want people not knowing my business,’ he laughs.
That work has become more and more high profile since David broke out as a posh boy in TV show Industry – moving quickly to film roles such as beloved romcom Rye Lane (‘We started at Sundance and finished at the BAFTAs – I feel so honoured that I got to be a part of that, and got to make it my own,’), sci-fi blockbuster Alien: Romulus, dystopian Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk and his current release, gritty prison drama, Wasteman (which he also produced). His next couple of projects are exciting: playing Sammy Davis Jr to Sydney Sweeney’s Kim Novak in Colman Domingo-directed biopic, Scandalous, a role in Frank Ocean’s top-secret move to film, and a road movie, Chaperones, reteaming him with his Long Walk co-star Cooper Hoffman as well as Paul Dano. As he looks across the high-end buildings of this part of town, David considers the progress he’s made from being a Canning Town kid who dreamt of acting, and used to sit on a park bench in Berkeley Square wondering if he’d ever move in such circles.
We’ll get to that bench later, but for now I suggest we head downstairs to grab some sushi in the hotel’s restaurant. As we get in the lift I ask what being a Cartier ambassador means to someone who grew up with limited means in Custom House. ‘My family didn’t have much growing up,’ he nods. ‘My mum got this one Cartier ring for my dad when he was doing kind of alright, and it’s in the family. I’ve also got a watch that I had that I just thought I’d never get something like that. So now I’m working with them, it’s bloody awesome. What I’m doing now, my friends are like, “We didn’t know that was possible.” Depending on where you grew up, it dictates what is possible, or what you think is possible. So I feel very, very lucky.’ Self-described as an introvert, David thinks his watchful nature – cultivated by having four older siblings and keeping his head down in East London – is what makes him the actor that he is. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to be on. If I can put it into a character, I’m winning. Someone asked Marlon Brando what he did and he said, “I’m a con artist.” I’m not, but maybe I am…’
My family are Creole. We have African and Caribbean influences that all feel very represented in East London and it’s one of those places that’s very community-based
He also admits to imposter syndrome, but there was no counterfeit when he won the EE BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2025. ‘That award meant more to me than anything, because it was BAFTA, but also it’s an award voted for by people. Now, listen, I love making movies, I love characters. But if people aren’t watching your stuff… So people getting behind me, and my work being received – it was proof. That meant everything.’ He’s told me previously about manifesting for his future as a younger man, so I suggest we head to where he used to dream. We jump in a cab and head to Berkeley Square.
‘I used to work at Abercrombie & Fitch. It was when I had nothing. It was in between me living in New York from 16 to 18 [he attended The American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship]. I was skating, and just messing about – I came back, and I did anything I could. I worked in bars and pubs, anything. I was a model at Abercrombie & Fitch and I remember walking on my lunch breaks. So I came to this square. I used to sit on a bench and just look around me. I used to think, “How am I going to get here?”’ We arrive at the square and walk to a bench near a towering tree. ‘My mum and my dad were always like, “If you’re going to do it, throw yourself into it. Give it everything.” This was my bench. I was 18. It was just before I got into RADA.’ I asked what the 18-year-old might say to see him sitting here now. ‘I reckon he’d be like, “You’ve done well. Keep going. Keep going.” I’m just trying to keep going.’
He’s doing more than keeping going: his latest project Wasteman sees him play an inmate nearly at parole and coping with a drug-dealer new cellmate, while trying to get back home to his little boy. It’s a visceral, tense and authentic study of the dynamics of prison life. The road to playing the role has been long and winding. David first auditioned for it straight out of drama school, but funding for the film fell apart. He went on to a series of informative theatre roles, but still thought about the project. Six years later he met producer Sophia Gibber and together they produced the film. ‘We shot it for 18 days. I lost 25lb to play the role, I was eating 800 calories a day. It should have been the hardest thing I’ve done. But I loved it. Most of my co-stars were ex-prisoners. It felt like we were doing something that was beyond Hollywood. It’s fertile ground for starting a company – trying to make sure that these films that I think are brilliant, entertaining, but also culturally relevant, get made.’ David shared that he and Sophia founded their production company greyarea., because ‘the stories we love don’t live in black and white. They live in the contradictions, complexities, and all the emotional truths in between – that’s where the most compelling storytelling happens.’
I remember walking on my lunch breaks. So I came to this square. I used to sit on a bench and just look around me. I used to think, ‘How am I going to get here?
The project has inspired him, but also made him appreciate not producing on a story and being able to concentrate on acting. ‘I don’t remember takes, I don’t watch playback, so I don’t even know what I look like on screen,’ he admits of his approach. ‘Maybe I could learn more about what I’m doing, and how things are. But right now, if I look at playback, I feel like I’m doing the job that the audience is meant to do. It’s not my job. It’s a great director’s job.’ Scandalous and the untitled Frank Ocean film are thrilling and allow him to focus purely on his craft (though he’s not at liberty to talk about either yet) and he looks at Michael B Jordan’s career as one to admire. ‘I just want to have a sustained career, and do what the fuck I want,’ he says. ‘You know, the great thing about acting is that you get the chance to hold a mirror up to people. That mirror is me. I care a lot about this job. No-one in my family, or where I’ve come from, has been able to do this. Which puts a pressure on you. You see other people sometimes just wing it. I’m not one of those people. I just can’t. I get that probably from my mum. Growing up in a single-parent household wasn’t easy at all, especially in East London. My brother and my sister did a lot of raising me. Those tough times, you remember. But you use them for something better now. Escapism is for the audience. Immersing is for the actor.
‘We celebrate fast success sometimes, and it doesn’t always come that quick. I look at someone like Colman and see you’ve got to really build something to have something strong.’ I suggest that, at 32, he’s been acting for half his life, so he must be doing something right. ‘I’ve got to get over this, I think. I’m still really shocked that I’m here. I’m not motivated by needing to work and do different things. I say no more than I say yes. And not because I think I’m better than anyone, but just because it’s not for me. So it’s that feeling of doing it my way. It’s awesome. I just want to remain playful, and try not to think too much.’
That said, he is keen to flex in a different direction – away from the quietly-spoken, sweet guy he is in person. ‘People are like, “You’re so nice.” I’m like, “I’m not nice. I’m a good person, but I’m not nice.” I think there’s a darker side of me that I’d like to explore more, which is happening. You want to show a bit more spectrum. I don’t have a plan. I want to just be able to move a bit. I’m having too much fun right now…’
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Wastemanis in cinemas now Groomer: Isata Allen Thanks to the Chancery Rosewood, Mayfair, London
David wears: Santos de Cartier necklace (Medium model), 18ct white gold Tank Louis Cartier watch (Small model), mechanical movement with manual winding, 18ct rose gold, leather strap Panthère de Cartier ring, 18ct yellow gold, onyx, black lacquer, tsavorite garnets Panthère de Cartier belt, black calfskin, golden-finish buckle
Cartier Tank Américaine watch (Small model), High-autonomy quartz movement, 18ct yellow gold Clash de Cartier ring (Medium model), 18ct yellow gold
Cartier LOVE earrings (Small model), 18ct yellow gold Tank Louis Cartier watch (Medium model), mechanical movement with manual winding, 18ct yellow gold, leather strap Clash de Cartier ring (Medium model), 18ct yellow gold
